Languages in the Big Apple

There’s a piece in the latest Christian Science Monitor (I know, I
know, but they run good articles!) on a new software program called
the Linkword Method, whose interactive approach to teaching foreign
languages is based on the mnemonic device.

In “How I ‘learned’ Spanish in a weekend by free association,” Thomas
describes the process:

On arriving at the Linkword website, I was met by thrilling
proclamations, money-back guarantees, and a bevy of testimonials
singing the praises of a simple system based on mnemonic devices,
invented by one Dr. Michael M. Gruneberg - who, it says, “has spent a
significant portion of his life studying human memory’. “The Linkword
Method,” it explains, “is based on the principle that the human mind
much more easily remembers data attached to spatial, personal, or
otherwise meaningful information than that occurring in meaningless
sequences or basic repetition.”

It claims that 300,000 people worldwide have used it successfully.
Next comes a simple example: the Russian word for “juice” is “sok.”
Picture yourself, it instructs, drinking juice out of a sock. Hold the
miniscenario in your mind’s eye for 10 seconds. Et voilà - the word
is allegedly locked into your mind.

She goes on to give some examples of how it works:

Moments later, I’m in the thick of it, imagining a cat eating a
gateau (gato), a cow vacuuming its field (vaca) and a monkey wearing
a monocle (mono). Though I feel a little silly, this is actually quite
fun. I forge ahead, speeding through vocabulary, working my way
through various tests - which, unlike school, seem effortless to
answer.

It might sound a bit far-fetched, but when I think back to all the
foreign vocabulary I’ve tried to shove into my brain, the words I
remember best are the ones for which I made up wacky association
devices. The price for the Linkword Method starts at $79.99 - steep,
but maybe worth it.

Article source

As a new report shows that only 20 percent of French students are
majoring in literature (compared to 50 percent of the previous
generation), Xavier Darcos, the Minister of Education in France is
worried that “France is in danger of becoming a nation of unemployed
sociologists unable to master speech or thought.”

Young people today are studying more “practical” fields such as
sociology and economics in order to secure a well-paid place in
France’s precarious job market.

But Darcos’ plan to revive interest in the French classics is seen by
some as a failure:

Traditionalists believe that the initiative is already doomed
because of the widely held view among the brightest students that
literary studies are a soft option for no-hopers. This trend is an
affront to the rich literary heritage that has produced writers such
as Molière, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, they say. There is also
resentment that intellectual literati are losing their privileged
status in Gallic society that they say is being corrupted by
television, the internet and globalisation.

Sounds pretty grim. But the teachers of France are not surprised -
according to Jean-François Guennoc, a lecturer at Paris University:

“The average is 10 to 12 mistakes but I’ve counted up to 50 in a degree
paper.”

Quelle horreur!

Complete article

A group of “campaigners for the English language” have found a new
cause for protest: public information posters they claim are
offensively “obvious,” such as a recent police sign that reads: “Don’t
Commit Crime.”

The Plain English Campaign, which “fights for the effective use of
English” also had problems with signs such as “Warning: Platform ends
here” on rail station platforms, and “May cause drowsiness” on
sleeping pills.

“It’s a phenomenon we noticed in recent years — a kind of talking
in a vacuum. There are so many examples,” said a spokesman, citing
notably packets of nuts labelled ‘Warning: contains nuts.’”

“The ‘best’ one I have come across was a sign reading ‘Caution: water
on road during rain.’

“They assume a lack of intelligence on the part of the reader. ‘Do
not commit crime. Pay for your fuel’ is hardly a deterrent to a
criminal who has every intention of driving off without paying.”

But if these self-evident slogans seem to cater to the stupid, that’s
because they do. That annoying label on McDonald’s coffee that reads
‘Warning: Hot’ appeared after a lawsuit filed by a woman who spilled
her cup of drive-through coffee on her lap and wanted reparations,
apparently unaware that the hot coffee she ordered would be so….
hot.

To end, here are some of the best signs that Plain English folks are
lamenting :

– “May irritate eyes” — on a can of self-defence pepper spray;

– “Do not open door while airborne except in emergency” — on
emergency exit doors in planes;

– “Removing the wheel can influence the performance of the bicycle”
– from a Dutch bicycle manual;

– “Do not iron clothes on body” — from packaging on a steam iron.

Loretta Kelsey is the last person on the planet who is fluent in Elem
Pomo, a dialect of the people indigenous to Clear Lake, California
that dates back to over 8,000 years ago. Because Elem Pomo was never
written, only passed on orally, it has nearly vanished; it’s Kelsey’s
goal to stop that from happening. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an
interesting piece about her quest to revive the language:

It wasn’t so long ago that dozens spoke Elem Pomo. When Kelsey was
a child in the 1950s and ’60s, her parents and many other elders in
the 250-member tribe were fluent, and her mother spoke no English.

But as the older folks died off and the younger ones forayed into the
broader society around them to make a living, many native ways were
lost. It was a disintegration that was millennia in coming.

Now, with the help of her nephew, Robert Geary, and recordings of Elem
Pomo made by UC Berkeley linguistic students from the 1940s through
the 1960s, Kelsey hopes to help ensure a future for her native tongue.
What’s interesting is the fact that she hasn’t spoken much Elem Pomo
for decades, Kelsey remembers it fluently. At 59, she’s working
methodically to record the language before she dies by writing a
dictionary and phrase handbook, and conducting language camps for her
tribe.
Let’s hope the revival succeeds!

Original article

It’s always fun to watch smaller newspapers and online journals get
all worked up about the New York Times — they sneer at the snobbisms,
gloat at any typos or errors, and laugh when ‘trend’ pieces are
published long after the trend has dissolved.

So it was especially satisfying to pick up the Brooklyn Eagle and find
an article by Henrik Krogius bemoaning the frequent misuse of
who and whom by prominent writers, including the Times’
Gail Collins.

Krogius writes:

Commenting on the recent death of Leona Helmsley, New York Times
columnist Gail Collins referred to Harry Helmsley, “who she wed…”
Ms. Collins may have been signaling that she was too cool to obey
grammatical strictures, unless she simply didn’t know the difference.
And her copy editor, who likely knew the difference, may have felt
constrained about messing with the sacrosant copy of an op-ed page
regular. It may also be that “whom” has become altogether too
difficult a concept for a world in which the subject, predicate and
object are totally alien notions.

Take that! He goes on to tear apart novelist Emily Mitchell (The
Last Summer of the World), who apparently likes to sound smart by
saying “whom” when she should say “who.” All in all, a snarky piece,
but it’s somewhat redeemed by the fact that it reminds us of the
who/whom rule in fairly simple terms:

Failing to understand that “who” is the subject of a clause while
“whom” is the object of a verb or preposition, too many writers get
thrown off by modifiers places between this pronoun and the verb. The
modifiers don’t alter the basic grammatical structure.

MediaMatters just published a funny story on a “body language”
expert’s interpretation of Sen. Hillary Clinton, which aired on Fox
News’ The O’Reilly Factor with creepy Bill O’Reilly.

Tonya Reiman, the purported expert, watched video clips of Clinton
laughing at different moments during her recent interview with Chris
Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and concluded that she “saw some
evil laughter.”

The entire article, which includes the idiotic transcript, is
definitely worth reading in its entirety. Get it here !

But just for kicks, I’ll also excerpt some of it below:

O’REILLY: Well, she looked like she’s having a swell time.

REIMAN: Oh, contrived, contrived. That was the first word that came to mind.

O’REILLY: They — you mean, those laughs weren’t genuine?

REIMAN: They — some of those — I saw some evil laughter.

O’REILLY: Evil?

REIMAN: Evil laughter.

O’REILLY: Whoa! How did — what’s evil laughter?

REIMAN: Yeah, you know, just the way her face contorted — the
different shifts in her face — and then the length of time that you
laugh and smile. You can kind of tell a lot from the length of time
that someone branches out with a smile. Real, genuine smiles are
quick. They flash. She went into a full body laughter, which is
bizarre for this kind of an interview.

The high court of Bombay recently declared that “clean and temperate”
language must be used in divorce petitions.

The case in question also deleted explicit passages from a husband’s
account of his wife’s alleged unnatural sexual demands.

According to the India Times,

The man, who cited these demands as an infliction of “mental
cruelty,” wanted out on these grounds. His wife maintained that the
descriptions in his petition were “scandalous, torturous, indecent and
traumatic” and should be struck off the record. The family court in
Mumbai rejected her plea, but the Bombay high court was more
understanding.

The high court held that a court of law should not permit a divorce
proceeding “to be converted into a source of continued embarassment
and harassment to a party” and struck off the offensive portions from
the written plea. “The judgment will help bring sobriety into nasty
courtroom divorce dramas where dirty linen gets washed,” said a
lawyer.

In courts, “actions and abusive words are reproduced verbatim even in
vernacular languages. This adds to the humiliation of the spouse who
is at the receiving end, irrespective of gender.”

In other news, Britney Spears has said that she hates L.A. and will be
moving to Atlanta, Georgia. Perhaps she should consider India.

You know kids are amazing, just have a look at this one :

Here’s a cool article picked up by the Christian Science Moniter
(again! I know!) that originally appeared on the writer’s blog. David
Keyes, a PhD student in Anthropology at UC San Diego, explains the
connection between soccer and linguistics through the Sapir-Whorf
theory.

Definition:
In a nutshell, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that language
doesn’t just describe reality – it shapes the way we perceive it. As
anthropologist Edward Sapir put it in 1929: “Language is a guide to
’social reality’…. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is
to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the
group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be
considered as representing the same social reality.”

In the Japanese language, for example, the word for self is jibun.
This word is made up of two parts, ji, which means part, and bun,
which means group. Put together, jibun literally means part of a
group. This has profound implications for the way the Japanese
typically conceive of the self. Unlike Western culture, which
emphasizes an individual’s autonomy, Japanese culture views people
always within the context of a group.

He goes on to define some fancy Costa Rican soccer moves, and to
explain the sociological importance of their names. La
plancha, for example, is literally defined as an iron to remove
wrinkles, but in soccer means a “straight-legged, cleats-up tackle.
Because there is a single word that describes this type of tackle,
Spanish-speakers are more likely to be aware of the offense (and thus
take offense at it being employed against them.)”

Keyes goes further in his explanation of the reality created by
language — read his blog.

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) recently announced the introduction of a
bipartisan bill called the Plain Language in Government Communications
Act (HR 3584) that would require federal documents such as tax
returns, federal college aid applications, and Veterans Administration
forms to be written in “easy, simple-to-understand language.”

I can’t decide if this is a good thing or if it just means we’re all
getting stupider.

In any case, here’s what Rep. Braley had to say:

“Anyone who’s done their own taxes knows the headache of trying to
understand pages and pages of confusing forms and instructions,” Rep.
Braley said. “There is no reason why the federal government can’t
write these forms and other public documents in a way we can all
understand.

“Writing government documents in plain language will increase
government accountability and will save Americans time and money.
Plain, straightforward language makes it easy for taxpayers to
understand what the federal government is doing and what services it
is offering.

“I’m proud to introduce this bill to make it easier for Americans to
work with and understand their government.”

And here are the Federal Plain Language Guidelines for writing talk
that’s simple-like:

*Use short, simple words
*Use “you” and other pronouns to speak directly to readers
*Use short sentences and paragraphs
*Avoid legal, foreign, and technical jargon
*Avoid double negatives

And just in case you’re dying to see Plain Language in action, go to
plainlanguage.gov to see before-and-after examples.
Yeehaw.